My high school memoir (My Nineteenth-Century Life) was waylaid by a narrator challenge. I could not find the right voice in which to tell my story. Was I writing the right memoir?

There was a hard incident. in this story that I was challenged to tell in the right voice—and to tell, period. If I opted for the neutral voice, was I not abandoning the adolescent I was then, an adolescent who needed an ally? If I wrote in a cynical voice, wasn’t attributing a point of view from my adult self but which was not shared by the “I” character who had little perspective other than feeling his hurt?

The result of this questioning was that I stopped writing—for a while. I knew that one day, I would pick this book up again and I would write it to the end. But that time was in the future.

To my surprise, when I returned to the manuscript, the book presented another writing challenge which brought me to a standstill.

It is not unusual for the writer who has put down a memoir a number of weeks, or months, or even years earlier not to be able to pick the story up again because the energy that had initially informed it is gone, evaporated. The memoir has become the wrong memoir to be working on. This may seem like procrastination but it might just be that the story has not yet matured within the writer. The story may still be raw material that the psyche has not yet transformed into writerly “gold.”

The energy necessary to complete the memoir and the energy directing your life may no longer be the same energy. Well, guess what I asked myself?

Was I writing the right memoir?

I felt constricted in my work with the high-school memoir I had written about elsewhere on this blog and it hit me that perhaps the story was not the best memoir for me to devote myself to at the time. Just as I had written about elsewhere on this blog, I needed to find another creative challenge that wasn’t so difficult emotionally.

I am always impelled to write something and do not enjoy myself for long without a writing project.

You see, I almost always have several memoirs in various stages of completion. Perhaps, I asked myself, I was not yet impelled to face the difficulty of writing My Nineteenth-Century Life.

When I was a senior—we called it “Fourth Form”—I lived an abusive experience that the principal subjected me to in front of a school assembly. The pain of it—still so vivid in my memory—stopped me from writing. Even now a half-century later, I am still affected by l;the cruelty of that event. The adult I am, the adult who has a Masters in Education and has taught for years, knows that the principal was in the wrong and it is he who ought to recoil in shame but the adolescent I was in that auditorium is still feeling the shame that seized me.

So how do you write about that? Do I want to?

My choice had been to decide not to—for the moment. Since the book had many themes which are important perhaps I can write the book without this incident.

Will My Nineteenth-Century Life become a false account without this event? I have been unable to decide on that.

This is a challenge that many writers face. I have often dealt with it in coaching and editing. The answer is hidden inside every writer. Some face the difficulty and go public with it; others do a work-around.

I have always said that writing a memoir is not an occasion to re-traumatize one’s self. That includes me. I do not have to do something because it is difficult.

My own case led me to look at others of the many manuscripts I had been working on. Which one happened to be the closest to sending out into the world? In short, which is apparently the one that needs the least work?

Well, this is not a bad reason to pick up a text—especially when you have several in your computer files waiting to be completed—but is ease of completion compelling enough to see a writer (me!) through the challenge of completing a manuscript?

Looking to be writing the right memoir

I decided to focus on a memoir of my childhood. I had not actually written much but the energy for it was rather high. It would also serve as a “prequel” to My Nineteenth-Century Life.

So…was this choice right? I wanted it to be and it turned out to be creative for me.

The book turned into French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood and has been out in the world since October 16, 2023. I have enjoyed supporting its reach into the world (my way of saying: marketing it!)

After publishing French Boy, did I then turn to My Nineteenth-Century Life?

No!

I picked up Here to Stay / Life in Seventeenth Canada. This is a history / memoir (if it’s possible to call this book a memoir) of four of my Canadian progenitors. I have read at least two dozen books on the times, have done extensive genealogical research (I have 6,000 ancestors in my eleventh-generation slots) and created a story of the first people in my paternal and maternal lines. I have adhered to the rule of not using fiction to move a memoir along. (Using fiction in a memoir  is like lowering the net to play tennis.)

I have made inferences which I labeled with phrases such as “It would seem likely that she did…” This is a fiction technique but I do not say this is what they did.

The book is finished and is going out this week for a proof copy from KDP. It is slated for a launch in mid-October. (I am sending it out to PhDs for blurbs in a few weeks and giving them three months to review Here to Stay / Life in Seventeenth Canada.)

So, am I going to pick up My Nineteenth Century Life?

Yes! The time has come. I am ready for the challenge.

For the moment, I intend to continue to write on the high-school book. While I have another story which also has many pages of text, I am sensing that the time has come to add My Nineteenth Century Life to my catalog of titles. I am looking for an October 2026 publication.

I don’t think I was looking for an excuse to procrastinate, but I did need time to let the story settle.

In conclusion to writing the right memoir

Be kind to yourself as you write. You are bound to come in contact with difficulties. Handle them with gentleness.

What has your experience been with picking a story up after a long time of letting it lie to the side?

Let’s hear below what you have to say.